Tag: MS Dhoni

Calcutta: He came despite the effigywallahs. There were enough of them at a time, especially in this city, for him to ponder cheeky profit — craft miniature effigies, trade them at a dollar a piece and die a rich man.

He came despite having had to wonder whether it had been worth trysting with India or Indian cricket, which can often begin to seem the same thing.

He came winging all the way from Melbourne for forty minutes on an arc-lit stage erected in another man’s honour.

Greg Chappell must desperately believe there are more pieces to his mind than got picked during his truncated tutorship of Team India. Any takers or none, he revealed some of the leftovers this evening in the course of a meditation on whether India can become the Brazil of cricket.

Chennai, May 27: The trick has tumbled out of Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s hat and become Gautam Gambhir’s crown. Hail the purple revolution, the yellow empire’s over. Calcutta, it’s Kolkata. Await the Knights riding in with the cup that brimmeth over at long last.

For a fair part of the game it seemed tonight’s would have to be a korbo, lorbo story; the jeetbo bit would have to wait for another season. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings (CSK) had pummelled their way to 190, loftier than the par IPL score. The Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) great hope and skipper was gone the first over, castled by Ben Hilfenhaus. Shah Rukh Khan looked like he had done well to wear a stubble to the final, it gave him an aptly morose visage.

It must take an actor to morph faces. The closer his Knights stumbled to the post, the more the stubble bristled, his fallen jaw fell into rock mode, he began to look like the gritty lead of Chak De India, against all odds. He may have planned the stubble to work either way and he may have planned well. This game could have gone either way. Continue reading “Stubble bristled, jaw locked & boy blazed”→